A
brilliant young software programmer stumbles upon a technology innovation that
enables him to create a neural-network based world that exists in cyberspace.It is a game that brings together two types
of players - those that represent "Cyberlians" that "exist"
inside the game and those that create "strands" that represent
feelings, emotions, and other phenomena that "Cyberlians"
employ.The object of the game is to
live the life you always wanted.The
game mirrors real-time but does support a "fast forward" feature for
general use as needed.

The
Cyberians

The
game enables a player to create a cyber-person in their own likeness or in the
likeness of anyone else they know, past or present, or in the likeness of
someone completely different.The
principle being that you have a second chance to be whoever you wanted to be in
a world (albeit cyber-based) that to all intents and purposes, is a real
person. You play out a second life in
the certain knowledge that it does not harm or relate or impact the real world.

If
you ever wanted to be an Industry Leader, a millionaire, an actor, a singer, a
famous sports personality, or miner - Cyberlia is the second chance you have to
make that dream real.As adults we have
the good fortune of hindsight - but we have no vehicle to exploit what we know
now in the past.Those that don't play Cyberlia
leave their chances to reincarnation.Those of the digital persuasion can exploit that knowledge and
experience and create a whole new experience.

Take
that exam you flunked.Ask that girl for
a date that you avoided.Play in the
game you missed.Visit that city you
always wanted to.Read the books you
always wanted. It's all possible -
anything is possible in Cyberlia.

The
idea is not unlike living in Sim City.The difference is a player is limited to operating one and only one
Cyberlian at any time.So if you are fed
up with real life, behind the eight ball, can't keep up with the Joneses, then
you can become the Jones'!In this
manner you create a new "you" - one that you can work as hard or
cheat as much as you want to.You create
a whole new person with his or her own distinct personality.You create whoever you want to be.No one can stop you.

Cyberlia
mirrors the real world so you can have a second chance - while you are still
alive.You can climb the corporate
ladder.You can marry that girl next
door.You can climb that mountain.

The
Strands

The
software needed to make Cyberlia is vast and very complex.It was a daunting task to bring Cyberlia to
fruition.This existence of this
cyber-world is in fact made possible through the Internet world.It exists on the Internet and in fact exists
in hundreds of servers around the world.In fact linking the servers and creating the self-synchronizing software
was the main work effort of Digital Games Inc., or DGI, as they were known.

Cyberlia
is as big a project as any known to man.The technology is as far ahead as the computer was to the
telephone.It was a great concept.But to make it real would require many, many
resources.Resources (programmers) that
would be required to create and quality assure the code.To reduce the time to market, DGI advertised
to the programmers the world over that they needed help coding Strands.

A
player "born" into Cyberlia has almost as many variables that a real
human does.Each player can create a
Cyberlian that is as complex as they want him or her to be.To support this goal of "second
chance" a vast array of alternative character traits, feelings, emotions,
skills and personifications had to be made available.DGI decided to hold an ongoing competition that
invited programmers to submit "strands", bits of code that would
"plug into" the Cyberlia generating engine that would, upon
successful QA and upload, be available to all Cyberlians.For example, "laughter" is a
particularly complex strand that, prior to its inclusion, meant that Cyberlians
were unable to invoke it.They could
still find certain things weird, or humorous, or silly, but not funny.That is, assuming that "weird",
"humor", and "silly" had been coded, and made available.

Strands
are very complex.DGI created a Road Map
that listed all the strands and their relationship with each other that they
wanted to program in to Cyberlia and offered financial awards for the
successful adoption of submitted strands.All approved strands were uploaded to a central server that made
available these strands to Cyberlians.As players, users could create a character that simulated life and
invoked all the strands as needed.An
example may help to describe what is a strand:

First day at school
- trepidation, nervousness, tense, head ache, excitement

The
idea is that any event that one experiences in real life is and can be
experienced again in Cyberlia.Only this
time you create a character that can re-live old feelings or can experience new
ones.It's up to you.What are available to you to
"invoke" are the strands in the central game or nervous system.

In
the early weeks and months Cyberlia was very basic.In today's terms, the game was very much
today's leading edge simulation games such as what you would get if you crossed
3-D with Sim City and so on.But as the
game caught on, more and more programmers submitted new and challenging strands
that found their way into the game. Instead of a single strand, users had many
options available that were themselves derived from combination of
strands.In other words, users (not
programmers) could invoke several strands at a time in order to create hybrid
strands.In other words, this looked
more like a tapestry rater then a series of loosely coupled threads.

After
about two years, Cyberlia was a robust, flourishing cyber-world where hundreds
of thousands of people were living their second chance.There were lawyers, factory workers,
managers, stock brokers, school teachers, holidays, money, arguments, love,
whore houses, marriage guidance councilors, love triangles, stock market
crashes, economic booms, and so on.If
you did not know it, and you had physically woken up in Cyberlia, you might
have thought that it was the real world.

The
Plot

Central
idea: A character in Cyberlia has been found murdered.The person was stabbed through the chest many
times and was found with a knife sticking out of their chest.The interesting thing is that
"murder" had not yet been uploaded into the game.It had not even been submitted as a strand.So the question is: how come a Cyberlian be
found murdered when that was not possible?Was it murder?If not, how could
it happen?

Two
human characters pontificate the logic behind the arguments.They conclude that it is impossible to
resolve.They dig into the Cyberlian
character to try to understand who he was.In Cyberlia, the identity of the real person that "owns" the
Cyberlian is hidden.It is not
confidential - it is just locked away in a code that ensures continuity but
ensures confidentiality.But this is one
line of analysis.The other line, the
interesting line, is the background of the dead person.

It
turns out that this person was in fact a scientist at a university that had
(himself) created a second, separate cyber world!This world was operational and in fact was in
its early stages in comparison to Cyberlia - but it was a world within a
world.Research concluded that the world
was "live" but it could not be located on the Internet.No servers could be indentified.

The
second twist is that this scientist had created a replica of the Cyberlia
engine and had in fact submitted to it a new and powerful strand called
"life".Research concludes
that this strand is in fact that which is responsible for the "real
world".And so an apparent paradox
is defined.However, it turns out that
this is not a paradox as this new world is not "real life" but more a
tool to control or manage "real life".This is similar in nature to what a voodoo
doll is to the target of the magic.As
the doll goes through changes, so does the target.This strand was the code that had been
created that would have allowed the "world within a world" to control
the real world.

So
much for the twist.

So
how was the murder committed and why?

The
why is very simple.Someone had found
out about "life" and was afraid that the real world was about to be
taken over.So the man had to die.That is the motive.The way in which the murder was concocted is
strange to say the least."Murder" had been uploaded to the second world.A character in that world, who was created by
a Cyberlian, that was itself created by a real person, "stepped out"
of the inner world and crossed the Internet divide to Cyberlia to stop the
submission of "life".

The
final twist.

The
game seems to have been faulty.The news
of the murder slowed down new users; many old users left; economic gloom kicks
in; recession; etc.GDI decides that the
game is no longer viable and decides to close the game down and start a new
venture.They attempt to close Cyberlia
down.After some effort, they do
so.

Parts
of the code live on in small, isolated servers around the world - just like
Pacific Islands after WWII.People on
those islands did not know that the war had ended for months - even years
afterward.But the gateways for new
players to enter were closed.

GDI
assumed that had closed Cyberlia down.They were supposed to think that.Users in the inner world had wanted the real people to think that they
had closed down Cyberlia.In fact, they
had not.Cyberlia was alive and well and
feeding all manner of new players into the inner world.The inner world was in fact the real
world.The story ends with two
characters discussing the failings of the "real world".The reader ends the story not knowing any
more which is the real world and which is Cyberlia.